15 Australian Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die

12. Snowtown

For truly horrific subject matter, filmmakers need often look no further than reality. Such is this case with director Justin Kurzel’s directorial debut Snowtown – a gritty and disturbing cinematic retelling of the real-life serial killings that plagued a run-down Adelaide suburb in the 1990s.

Daniel Henshall makes a brilliant big screen debut as John Bunting, a charismatic but dangerous man and the main perpetrator behind the killings who appoints himself the moral compass of the community and begins killing off local paedophiles and gay men. Lucas Pittaway is equally amazing as the young, abused protégé Bunting takes under his wing and finds himself embroiled in a web of torture and murder.

It’s an unrelentingly bleak and gruelling film to watch made all the more horrifying and sad by the fact the events within actually took place but thanks to Kurzel’s direction and True Detective cinematographer Adam Arkapaw’s gritty visuals, it never verges on the sensationalistic but rather shows murder in all its brutal banality.